Twilight leads race for MTV Movie Awards
Story by Lizzie Guilfoyle
TWILIGHT, the story of a passionate romance between a mortal girl and an enigmatic vampire, has been nominated for seven awards at this year’s MTV Movie Awards.
They include Best Movie, Male Breakthrough Performance (for British actor Robert Pattinson and co-star Taylor Lautner), Best Female Performance (Kristen Stewart), Best Fight, Best Song (Paramore’s Decode) and Best Kiss.
In four of those categories, it will be competing against Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire which has a total of six.
A rags-to-riches story set in the slums of Mumbai, Slumdog Millionaire has been nominated for Best Movie, Male and Female Breakthrough Performances, Best Kiss, Best Song (for AR Rahman’s Jai Ho) and Most Surprising Scene of the Year – a young boy escaping from an outhouse to meet his movie idol.
Also up for Best Movie are High School Musical 3: Senior Year, The Dark Knight and Iron Man.
In the Best Male Performance category, Christian Bale (The Dark Knight) will be competing against Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man), Shia LaBeouf (Eagle Eye), Vin Diesel (Fast and Furious) and Zac Efron (High School Musical).
As well as Kristen Stewart, the nominees for Best Female Performance include Kate Winslet for her Oscar-winning role in The Reader, Angelina Jolie (Wanted), Anne Hathaway (Bride Wars) and Taraji P Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).
And Heath Ledger, who won a posthumous Oscar for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight, has been nominated for Best Villain.
This year, for the first time, the awards organisers have allowed MTV fans to choose nominees and to vote for winners. Votes can be cast on MTV’s website until May 27 for all categories except Best Movie, which will remain open until May 31 when the winners will be announced.
The awards ceremony, hosted by Andy Samberg, will take place at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles and will be aired live on US television.